Online Marketing Strategy Blog

What can the right online marketing strategy, combined with the right website and internet marketing platform produce?

Take a look at these case studies to see how some recent clients have improved their search engine rankings, attracted more visitors and generated more leads and sales. As well as saving on website design, build and internet marketing costs...

Your Online Marketing Strategy should include a Lead Nurturing Strategy.

Research shows that 12.5% of leads are normally ready to buy now, 17.5% can be discarded/dis-qualified and a huge 70% are longer term opportunities worth nurturing. (Source: Marketing Sherpa).

This is where Automated Lead Nurturing as part of your Online Marketing Strategy can really make a difference to the return on your marketing efforts.

The challenge with nurturing leads are many:

Not enough time in the day

Multiple products and data sources to manage

Manual processes to send and schedule emails

Pressure to improve results

Multiple channels that aren't integrated

Lead qualification and prioritisation is to cumbersome

This 70% are in the interest stage of your products and services but do not yet have the desire to buy. They are in "research" mode. This is typical in the Business to Business space and can range from 8 to 18 months in duration.

To add to this, sales need to focus on hot prospects, now! They need to close deals for the quarter and do ont have the time to nurtured possible deals that have a longer window of even starting than the next 3 months.

A good Lead Nurturing Strategy and system can plug this leaky hole in your marketing and sales pipeline. An automated system, with content structured in paths that help qualify leads automatically and score your leads and automatically feed your sales team with hot, qualified prospects.

The biggest mistake made is thinking that a monthly email is a lead nurturing program - far from. The right strategy and system will use a combination of electronic, telephone and print to stay in contact with prospects.

The system can:

Be smart enough to learn when each individual is most likely to open their email and send it at the right time

Deliver content that they are interested in, from the sales person they are dealing with

Give sales business intelligence so they know what their prospects are interested in

Seamlessly integrate your email with your website analytics so you can track prospect's behaviour end to end

Not having a SEO Plan on all terms

Instead of brainstorming 20 to 30 keywords for search engine optimisation, use Google Keyword Analysis. These tools help you find all the terms people are using, to find your products and services.

Prioritise these words into easy, medium and long term ranking goals for Google. Optimising your web pages for all your easy terms will bring relatively quick, free and qualified traffic to your website. You will then set the right outlook for your Online Marketing Strategy, for visitor goals and ranking - helping you focus your time and money in the right areas.

It is the nature of internet marketing that each area affects the other's results.

For example, your design will have weaknesses if you don’t consider how you are going to bring traffic to your website – getting image names and messages incorrect. Choose the right platform to place your design on, or you will impact your ability to conduct search engine optimisation effectively. Ensure your copy writer writes for easy and search engine ranking, otherwise you will have to rework your content to increase traffic to your website.

Not positioning uniquely

Most people look at their competitors to “copy” things they like about their websites. What happens though, when a visitor has you and your competitors websites open, and is trying to decide who to contact? You must position your website uniquely – both in terms of unique buying motives and experience of using your website.

Not monitoring website analytics and testing & measuring to improve

Do you look at your statistics alone, or do you look into your website analytics to discover visitor behaviours? These behaviours might be losing you sales.

Subtle things can make a big difference to your leads and sales generation. Image placement and types used, headings and the traffic you are bringing to particular pages, ease of reading of your content and many other things affect your conversion rates. Use website analytics to find out what you can improve on your website.

Confusing strategy with tactics

There are over 27 pillars of strategy, and more than 500 tactics, that can be used on the web to increase leads and sales.

An Online Marketing Strategy is a logical plan across these tactics. Planning what is suitable to your business will ensure your tactics and strategy work together effectively. It includes building the capability of your team, implementing the right systems and procedures.

Making decisions based on price alone

We understand many people find that there is so much information, it is challenging to choose the right solutions.

Because of this and conflicting interests of niche providers such as Web Designers and Search Engine Optimisers, defaulting to price decisions - in the absence of facts you can trust - can seem to be your safest way of managing risk.
In reality, the price may seem low but as you discover your real growth needs, expenses begin to mount and your low price risk management begins to hurt you. Using an experienced online marketing strategy business consultant can help you navigate the information overload and guide you on the right decisions for your business.

To generate more leads online, most people just think about their website...

Missing the opportunity their website could bring if it was built as part of a sales lead generation engine.

Whether you have an existing website, or are creating a new one, when you include the modules needed to generate more leads online you will have a successful web presence.

To generate more leads your sales lead generation engine must have:

Market Research to develop content structure and search engine ranking strategies, on words people are actually using to find your products and services on the internet. Discovering these words and then conducting a detail Competitive Google Keyword Analysis will help you attack keywords that will rank quickly for qualified prospects.

These words also help you leverage your marketing efforts by using a common theme to your market across your marketing activities.

A Competitor Analysis (There are over 110 individual points to be analysed) which helps you position to be the only obvious choice to your prospects. Along with identifying fast actions to outperform your competitors now.

Considerations into integrating with your business growth strategies. Identifying how much of an impact your web presence can have towards your business goals. Ensure you have website Key Performance Indicators so you can measure your lead pipeline effectiveness.

A unique website based on points 1 to 3, ensures your Unique Selling Proposition is communicated through your design, content and sales process (The way you engage visitors).

A database building mechanism. Research and experience shows that, in the B2C (Business to Consumer) environment, 80% of prospects will turn into buyers 3 months from the first visit to your website. In the B2B (Business to Business) environment this can be 8 months or more. If you can have them agree to keeping in touch in some way, you have a 90% chance of them returning to you when they reach a buying or short listing decision.

A lead nurturing program that begins with point 5. This program can be highly automated and can help you qualify prospects further, while you build a relationship by sending them helpful material. Emails from your personal mail account do not count as a lead nurturing program.

Traffic driving strategies which are both online and offline. Go beyond search engines. By also driving traffic from your offline marketing, you can structure your website to have a targeted message and measure offline campaign effectiveness, beyond the amount of enquiries you receive. This can help you identify if your offline media is generating the interest that it needs to.

Website analytics and CRM (Customer Relationship Management) so you can get the facts, into the details, of how your marketing is performing and focus the sales team. Identify, with pin point accuracy, what stages of your sales and marketing process need to be improved and what individuals your sales/business development team need to follow-up with. No more unproductive cold calls.

A Business Intelligence, Measurement, Leads and Sales dashboard allowing you to automatically track your progress real-time, so you can make fact based business decisions on your web presence. This information then feeds into your business growth strategies plan, helping you grow your sales and profit - addressing performance gaps.

In this day and age, the technology to implement a sales lead generation engine that can generate more leads online is fairly inexpensive. Assess the return on investment based on facts before making another change to your website or marketing activities.